The work presented in this paper aims at supporting students involved in a Web-based distance-learning curriculum. For such a purpose, the Saafir system proposes students with different tools that support them in their appropriation of this curriculum, e.g. visualization of the curriculum from different points of view or construction of individual projects by putting different items of the curriculum into relation. In order to allow using Saafir with already existing distance-learning Websites, the system is designed as an epiphyte system, that can be associated to an existing Website without modifying it. It is founded on an ontology-based model of the curriculum. We present the importance of supporting students in their definition of individual projects, the epiphyte approach we use, the modeling of the curriculum and the different support tools proposed by Saafir. (http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/WI.2003.1241206 )